


and when I look across at you (will my hand still remember yours)

by echoesofstardust



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: 6+1 Things, F/M, I was waiting for a better writer to write this, but I got desperate, inspired by that one and only diner comment, please accept my sincerest apologies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-01
Updated: 2019-02-01
Packaged: 2019-10-20 16:56:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17626088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/echoesofstardust/pseuds/echoesofstardust
Summary: six times Tessa and Scott eat at a diner, and one time they don’t.





	and when I look across at you (will my hand still remember yours)

_ i. at eight and ten _

There’s a diner tucked in one of London’s inner streets. The floor’s patterned in black and white squares like a chess board, the worn leather seats once a bright cherry red, the table tops sticky from whatever drinks had been spilt on it. There’s a bell that jingles when customers walk in and it rings as a pair of bright-eyed kids dash inside, gleaming blue ribbons pinned to their chest.

Tessa and Scott had just finished their first skating competition. Their moms had promised to take them out for ice cream after.

The pair halt as soon as they reach the counter, their mothers exasperated and puffed behind them.

“Scotty!” Alma chastises, “What did I say about running in inside places?”

“Tessa Jane!” Kate exclaims in a similarly exasperated tone, “That’s the same for you too!”

Tessa and Scott turn back to look at their mothers with faux-contrite faces, but it’s clear that they’re both struggling to contain their grins.

Scott nudges Tessa’s shoulder. “What flavour ice-cream do you want, Tutu?”

“Chocolate,” she answers almost immediately.

“Just plain chocolate? You sure?” Scott is met by a glacial glare from the tiny girl standing next to him.

He chuckles, “I’m just saying they’ve got a new flavour, triple chocolate fudge brownie, that I thought you’d much rather have so…”

An excited cry escapes from Tessa, “Yeah! That one, I want that one! Mom, can I have that?”

As the pair enjoy their ice cream in one of the booths, sugar and sweetness topping off an exciting day, they lock eyes across the table, the elation sparking in their irises a twin set.

 

_ii. at thirteen and fifteen_

“What’s gotcha so glum, Tess?” Scott asks as he sits across from Tessa in the diner. He worries at the cherry red cover of the seats, picking at an open seam where the stuffing is coming out.

Tessa looks up sharply. “Nothing.” She pushes the fruit on her pancakes around, not having the appetite to eat anything.

Scott narrows his eyes. “There’s something. Why won’t you tell me?”

“It’s nothing, Scott. I said already, there’s nothing. Just stop.” Tessa’s words are biting. She bites a chunk off a banana slice.

Scott huffs, but tries to remember that Tessa’s never intentionally hurtful. He attempts to look closer at her. He notices the pinch in her eyebrows, the wobble in her lip.

It hits him like a raindrop. “Is it because we’re moving away soon?” he says softly.

Tessa draws her bottom lip between her teeth. She closes her eyes. Her chest rises and falls in time with a deep sigh.

“Yeah.” The word is barely a breath, soft and slow and sloughing. “Scott—I’m scared.”

He’s worried too, but he’d never admit it. He pats her hand. “I’ll take care of you, T. I promise.”

“I’ll take care of you too.” She says with the same amount of conviction.

“Together?”

“Together.”

 

_iii. at twenty-one and twenty-three_

They’re at the diner after her second surgery. After everything that had gone wrong the first time, Scott is determined to do everything right this time.

She’s barely been given the all clear when Scott whisks her away to their diner, the one with the chessboard floor and cherry red seats and the sticky tables.

“If she’s too tired or the pain’s too much, I can carry her,” he persuades Kate with his trademark charming smile.

“I’m paying for everything by the way,” Scott tells Tessa, as he slides in next to her in the booth.

Tessa cocks her head to the side, eyes narrowed, but she concedes.

They order relatively quickly, Scott a smorgasbord of fried foods that an elite athlete probably shouldn't eat, and Tessa a decadent waffle dish topped with every sweet thing imaginable.

She was almost going to go for a less exorbitant meal, but Scott had been perceptive enough to notice her gaze wandering back to the one she really wanted.

“Just get it, T. My treat.” The way her gaze softens as she turns to look at him, the gentle upturn of her lips, is something Scott wishes he could take a picture of.

When their food arrives, Scott makes a big show of pretending to take food from Tessa’s dish.

“But it looks so _good_! Just one bite, please?” he whines, trying not to laugh, “And I’ll give you a bite from mine, I promise.”

“Only if you let me have my bite from your plate first,” Tessa bargains, before she eats a massive chunk of waffle.

“Okay, okay, here.” He tries to get a bit of everything on his fork before holding it out to her.

As she takes the bite off his fork, her green eyes a breathtaking shade of emerald, he realises that this is a girl he could fall in love with.

Or maybe he already has.

 

_iv. at twenty-five and twenty-seven_

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

They’ve both been ensconced in their vaguely defined retirement for a while now, Scott living the life he missed out on, Tessa pouring litanies of ‘yes, yes, yes’ from her lips.

There’s text messages and some phone calls, more that went to voicemail than not, and it’s much rarer for them to see each other in person.

“How have you been?”

“Good, you?”

“Yeah, good as well.”

There’s awkwardness hanging in the air, some sort of fog that you couldn’t bat away because it would just come back, curling like tendrils of smoke.

She wants to reach out to him, brush the dust and cobwebs from his cover and crack him open like a book. She’s not sure if that’s her place anymore.

The waitress comes by to ask for their orders. Scott jumps in to say what she was ordering, something he assumes she wanted, at the same time she says something completely different.

Scott had looked horrified. “I’m sorry,” he apologises, “I didn’t mean to assume. It’s just—” Words fail him. He huffs out a breath instead. “I’m sorry.”

It’s understandable really. He had guessed her orders with frightening accuracy in the years past. But she realises it’s inevitable that—

—he doesn’t really know her anymore. They don’t really know each other anymore.

“It’s okay,” she shoots him a smile she hopes will hide the growing tightness in her throat and behind her eyes, “I just felt like branching out.”

They wait for their food in silence.

 

_ v. at thirty and thirty-two _

The year of Pyeongchang was an incredible, indescribable sort of high. Achieving that gold medal was something that they had worked hard towards and had poured their hearts and souls into. Doing it with Scott by her side and their hands in each other’s made it even _more_. More meaningful. More cherished. More, more, more.

As time progresses, she feels their partnership change. This drifting from absolute closeness where you can’t tell where she ends and he begins, to a bit more distance is normal and to be expected. They’re making future plans and they both know it’s important to pursue their own careers, but they’re still making time for projects together.

Still, change is scary. She broaches the topic as she sits in a diner with Scott.

“It’s just terrifying looking into the future, you know? Exhilarating and exciting at the same time, but it’s an adjustment not to have everything planned out to a t,” she’s in between bites of poached eggs on toast.

“I know how much you like everything planned to a t, T,” he winks at her as he tucks into his scrambled eggs and bacon and she chuckles. “But it’s nice to be able to pursue dreams that we haven’t been able to dream because of the sport, right?”

Tessa can see his dreams like a montage inside his head. The one with mini Moirs running around in the house he is yet to finish, but he will soon. She’ll always be willing to support him in any and all his dreams, including this one.

It’s not a dream she has yet, for herself. But Scott wants a family. And Tessa knows any woman would be lucky to be cared for by Scott. He’s cared for Tessa for over twenty years. She guesses it’s time for another.

When he inevitably finds someone else, and it will most likely be the one he’ll settle down with, she knows that her relationship with Scott will shift again, like the ebb and flow of the tides.

There’s one thought in her head that scares her.

_Will I lose you, Scott?_

 

_ vi. at sixty and sixty-two _

They’re back at the diner in London. It’s changed owners and management and it’s gone through renovations but it still feels the same. It still has the stereotypical chess board patterned floor and cherry red seats, but they, Tessa and Scott, are much, much older now.

There’s a gleaming metal band on his finger. On the inside, she knows it’s engraved with both his and his wife’s initials.

They’re looking at each other over coffee. Him, a simple cappuccino. Her, some fancy concoction she ordered off the board that she can’t even remember now.

She still remembers being twenty-nine and wondering if she’d still be able to read him like a book, whether she’d still know the thoughts that dance and flit and skate through his head.

As she looks at him, she knows her answer to that question.

 

_ +i. at eighty and eighty-two _

It’s early in the evening when Scott peers out the window. He sees a bright flurry of snow fall from the inky sky. It’s majestic and breathtaking.

“Scott?” Her voice calls him. Just his name, just like it has millions of times before. He turns his head to face her, just like he has millions of times before.

She’s majestic and breathtaking. His wife.

“It’s 6 pm.” Her lips fragment into the brightest grin he’s ever seen. “You know what that means?”

She’s snuggled on their couch with a heap of fluffy blankets, pillows pushed up against one side. She shuffles slowly to the right, leaving a spot for him.

“I don’t know, what does that mean T?” he teases, but he’s reaching for the remote and turning on the TV. He sits down as close to her as possible, arm wrapping around her. She tucks her head somewhere between his shoulder and chest.

The opening of _Jeopardy!_ plays on the TV.


End file.
